Final Challenge (28 page)

-
You talk about it as if you
were exempting yourself from your responsibilities. Anyw
ay, I still don't understand why
the clones do not rebel against you, sooner or later they will realize of your iniquity.

- Iniquity? All they are, absolutely everything, they owe it to us. We have given them all they have. They trust in us, is it so strange for you?

- To put it another way. Under this trust, that faith, th
ey think the same way that you
have given their lives, have the solution to their illnesses. They've been led to believe it so, right? But really, once they concluded their mission ... this is a ... - Clerigan interrupted before completion -

- Eyesore? 
Aberration? It's the word you were looking for, right? ... I think you shouldn't have such opinion about m
e. Don't d
raw inaccurate conclus
ions, don't judge me by a particular case that d
id not depend on me, that wasn’
t in my hands. Do you think that a parent looks for the worst for his children?

- If you've played
to be
God, you should accept the responsibility that belongs
to
you.

- Being God is not easy. They also must respect and obey me. Dear Kelly, I have had to play a role in a new world with a new order.

- Don't you realize that you have transgressed the boundaries of science to go into the scabrous world of morality? - Kelly shook her head in negation sign - I regret coming. Now I'm realizing all the damage that know
ledge in the wrong hands can do
.
How could I? ... I admired you so much, professor! You can't imagine how much!

 
- Have you looked around you? Perhaps y
our God and mine, Kelly,
has been concerned to solve the life that has given us? Do you reproach it to him perhaps? I would rather say that most religions revere their gods for what they are and not what they take away.

- You've gone too far in your research, professor.
You p
robably never stopped to think about their consequences. And I'm afraid it's too late to rectify. You've opted for a forward flight, right?

- I knew you would not understand. I am their God, the only one they have. They owe me life, they never even had had a chance without me .

Kelly realized that she was discovering more things about herself than about Clerigan. She managed to identify the emotions that aroused her old love, and thus managed to control her visceral impulses, the same impulses that would have led her to disqualify him.
The anger and helplessness
that
she felt at what she considered an insult to nature, if not to God, was compensated for the pain of seeing a loved and admired being turned into a madman, a victim of his frustrations. She only had to look at the contorted expressions of Clerigan
's face as he tried to defend until
the death of her charges to reach the conclusion that she was before a tormented person, torn, unable to accept his mistakes, someone who was closer to death than life, the life he proclaimed to have given, because when someone is spiritually dead is only a matter of time that his body follows the same way.

 
Clerigan was silent, waiting for a reproach, a passionate reaction from his former student that never came. Instead, a tear slid down
by
Kelly's left cheek. Clerigan noticed it, took out his handkerchief and wiped it gently. Neither understood nor dared to ask why that tear had escaped.
If he had done it would have been one of the greatest moral shock
s
of his life. Behind that tear there was a retained feeling of pity, of disappointment, of impotence to do anything to remove him from the abyss. It was as if in that bottomless fall, Clerigan also had dragged down with him her memories of the past, as if he had brought forever something that belonged to her and only her.

 
The silence was suddenly broken by several shots from the mansion. Clerigan asked Kelly to take refuge near the bungalow as he ran in the direction that had sounded.

XXXVIII

  
Hanson came to the palisade and approached the gate of the entrance. He was surprised to not see the sentry because he had to admit he didn't trust at all in the empathy of Klein to win his sympathies. In any case he decided to risk as little as possible, he climbed to the near tree th
at allowed him to access the wall.
From there he could see quite far an unmistakable silhouette of a woman. He felt so good, no doubt it was his longed Kelly, walking beside a man
about sixty, that he imagined
was Clerigan.
His first impulse was going to her and rescue her, but then imposed himself a rule of sanity.  He should continue with their plan without anything or anyone, if possible, altered it. After all, Kelly was being treated as a guest, it was obvious because the attitude of the man, who by his gestures seemed to be explaining something that Hanson was unable to interpret at that distance.

Hanson
looked around and didn't see no
one else. He jumped the wall and walked slowly toward the mansion. As he was halfway he heard a noise, approached and saw two men talking.  Why Klein's coworker at Genfly laboratories had told him that Klein was a shy and introverted person?...
He should see him there, intimating with the guard, bottle in hand, smiling his jokes, following his conversation. He remembered the exchange of views with Kelly in a camp lost in the jungle, in which both concluded that natural environment did wonders among humans, taking
out from them some skills that
in normal conditions no one could have imagined.

Klein was no exception, a scientist who was always on his own, focusing on his work, which didn't miss the communication with others for the simple reason that he didn't need it, and
surprisingly
he had not only caught the sentry weakness but he had managed to empathize with him until the point of that his biggest problem would be getting rid of him once he had achieved his goal.

Hanson waited a few minute
s hiding behind a tree and, as
he noticed that the Klein bottle companion was so comfortable in his company that he hadn't any intention to return to his post, he made
a sign to the scientist.
The sentry would not stop
talking, he should be very bored of his long and lonely guards.  He still had to wait another five minutes, until Klein took advantage of a brief recess that did his companion with the sole purpose of ti
ppling, to try to convince him
with the argument that he should
return to the laboratory, as he had much work to do and Clerigan could become angry.
The reasoning seemed to be compelling enough because his face became livid and immediately turned, bottle in hand, to his p
ost at the gate of the stockade
. Hanson concluded that with just saying his name, Clerigan com
manded respect among his men.
Klein approached to Hanson, who, after shaking hands could not avoid to do an assessment.

-
I guess the bottle was yours.

- I could not think of a better way to approach him - Klein conf
irmed, whispering - Anyway, it
also have helped that Clerigan was entertained. - Nodded his head toward the place where he was with Kelly - I guess that
girl is one of the people you
referred yesterday.

- Right.

- I have good news - Klein flashed a knowing smile - my friend - he nodded toward the palisade - wanted to talk. Alcohol has done the rest.

- No need you tell me, I had already noticed it!

- Now I know where the prisoners are. I had always dr
awn attention to a kind of trapdoor
that is in the basement but I never dared to inquire.

- A hatch? Do you have a latch or lock? We'll have to force it.

- It is not necessary.

- Do not tell me
you've got the key! The sentry
? ...

- Please, you're asking me too!
Neither I had been able nor he
had given me.

- What then?

-  Two men of Clerigan usually go down all days at this hour. I imagine that they prick to prisoners as part of gene therapy to which they're subjected.

-Therapy?
Perhaps a
re they all sick? Woe! Damn! - Hanson stared at K
lein hoping that he would give
him an explanation -

- It's just one more of the atrocities to which I referred yesterday. Clerigan needs human guinea pigs for his experiments - looked around - Don't you think we're a
t
risk staying here?

- Right. Approach the front
door, I will follow you to enough distance. Once inside, make sure no one prevents the passage,
then discretly make
me a sign.

Klein calmly approached the house, opened the door with his key and went inside, leaving the door slightly open. Hanson
approached all he could hiding
among the trees. After a few seconds he saw as Klein stu
ck his head. Hanson glanced to
the sentry post. He was yet busy with his bottle and looking to the jungle, so he took the
first
occasion to cross the few yards that separated him from the porch and entered the house. Klein nodded to follow him.
They had t
o go through a long corridor. A
ladder could be guessed to the end, but before reaching their destination they heard voices coming from a door that opened into the corridor. Klein motioned with his hand and they took refuge in a small room.
In appearance it was the bedroom of one
of the mercenaries of Clerigan,
ramshackled, a few possessions, the unmade bed and a straw hat on one chair. The voices took shape, belonged to a woman and a young girl.   

- Let's see Pete. Sure it has something to calm the pains - said the woman -

- Every night, Aunt Sena. I can't sleep, it hurts a lot ...

As soon as
their footsteps stopped, they went back to the corridor and headed to the stairs at the back, coming down to the basement.
They went down very slowly and carefully the steps, ensuring that the noise of wood didn't reveal them.
The darkne
ss was absolute in the basement
, but the first thing that caught the attention of Hanson was the strong and unpleasant smell of damp and rotten wood. Klein pulled a small flashlight from t
he back pocket of his trousers.
Hanson winked as expressing that he had read his thoughts. The flashlight helped to discover a large space, dirty, full of furniture in poor condition and utensils stacked atop one another. Klein focused light to a place almost opposite the site where they were, letting see a wooden hatch that was open, upright.

- Someone must have gone down - Hanson whispered to Klein - It's possible that they return soon. We should hide - he looked around for a site that offered security, looking at what must have been the remains of a large cl
oset - there - noted by hand -
They took refuge behind a makeshift barricade and stood a while, until they heard voices beneath the trapdoor.

- Well, that's enough for today. Only remains for us to give them dinner - one of the men said as he left the door with a torch in one hand and shaking the dust with the other -

- You're too much optimist, surely Sena hasn't it ready yet, as usual - his fellow pointed out -   

The men of Clerigan left one of their torch
s
on a stand next to the wall and were out aided by the light of the other without bothering to close the hatch, probably thinking it wasn't worth it, since they would soon return.

  
Hanson took the torch introducing through the narrow hole dug in the floor, resting his feet on wooden planks that served as stairs, then Klein f
ollowed him. At twenty feet from
the surface, the vertical down ended at the beginnin
g of a gallery dug in the rock.
A passageway, a little less narrow but no less distressing.

 
Along the way, Klein put Hanson in backgrounds. Briefly told everything he knew about Clerigan's investigations, which did not include the identities of the clo
nes, the best kept secret that
had not been disclosed to him, but yes the ability to create clones in a few years.
He also confessed that he had found some papers in the laboratory of Owen, which showed that he had been involved so much in the project, that had not hesitated to apply gene therapy relat
ed to the aging gene on himself.
Then
the image of Sheridan, ie Owen
came to Hanson's mind. It explained that the biological age of the man seemed much higher than t
he chronological, so in sight,
he seemed about thirty years older than when he was gone.